Youth Club for Elderly

Transcript

00:00My name is Adrian Brown and I'm the Chair of the Regional Committee of U3A in Northern

00:11Ireland.

00:13We have 24 groups, widely scattered over Northern Ireland, as far west as Enniskillen, as far

00:20north as Derry, Stoke-Londonderry, as far south as Newry, and of course Belfast and

00:27Bangor are two very large ones on the eastern side.

00:3224 groups, with about 8,500 people in all and rising.

00:38We say in North Down and Arts, for example, we do everything from art to Zumba, 100 groups

00:45would you believe, all run by people themselves, run by the members for the members.

00:52U3A is really an organisation which caters for people who are retired or semi-retired.

01:07It promotes lifelong learning.

01:11Some people would call it a youth club for the elderly.

01:15It's a way of people learning what they want to learn for pleasure, for fun, meeting people,

01:21meeting new people, making friends, and generally improving their life, developing themselves

01:29so there is life beyond work and parenthood and in the third age that we all enjoy after

01:36work and family responsibilities are over.

01:42I retired from work about two and a half years ago and after I retired there was a lot of

01:48time on my hands.

01:49I said I need to be doing something and I happened to meet a member of the U3A at a

01:55social occasion who said to me why don't you join the U3A.

01:59I went along and I was hooked from sort of the first day.

02:03Initially I went and parked, saw them all assembling for their Monday walk and thought

02:08well I want to and actually at one stage got back in the car, then I walked across, signed

02:13up and because the group leader had retired I took over the leading of it.

02:21I've got a really good start to the week getting up on a Monday to go for a walk.

02:25I've better time management skills because I've taken on loads of things since and I

02:30have to fit them all in but probably the best bit is I've met a great, great group of people

02:35who have spoken to me and talked to me about other things and I've actually delved into

02:40some of these other things.

02:41It's been a massive change, I've worked in sort of backroom jobs for IT and I always

02:48struggled speaking in front of people but then one day I realised you're 65 and we're

02:55not going back so get out and do it now because you never know how long you've got to do it.

02:59I think the enjoyment that I see other people getting from it, I've said to everybody when

03:04I walk on a Monday morning and I can hear 25 or 30 voices or laughter behind me, I would

03:10say this is a successful group.

03:17Anybody can join, I did of course there, I have finished full time work.

03:23I would say it's a very good way to cushion people who have come from jobs of great responsibility,

03:31they can use their skills to run groups or to chair the organisation in various ways.

03:39Actually I think it has saved some lives because I've come across people who were in a very

03:46bad place after their spouses died and U3A has literally rescued them.

03:54So it's life changing.